The service started in the top storey of a tall house late on Saturday evening. The air was thick with smoke from burning lamps. The readings and the sermon lasted for ages. Then there was communion. The service ended in the small hours. And the congregation lingered to talk with the visiting preacher until around daybreak on Sunday morning.
We have this picture of early Christian worship because a young man named Eutychus was so overcome by the fumes or the sermon that he fell from the window-sill and all but died. You'll find the story in Acts 20:7-12.
For centuries, reading, listening, praying and breaking bread together on a Sunday was the main way in which Christians worshipped. This gradually took on a definite format, which we continue to use in the Eucharist.
The service of preparation for the Eucharist took on a life of its own. Later on, monks and other groups wanted to meet for prayer more often than once a day. Celebrating the Lord's Supper more than once seemed pointless - gluttonous, even. So they developed short, set services of prayers, readings, psalms and hymns - the Hours, as they were called. And even later, clergy in the western church were saying the Hours by themselves or together with other people. There were eight of these Hours (Matins - the original preparation service, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline).
By the 16th century, both the Eucharist and the daily Hours were sometimes remote and ritualised. The Reformation and the end of monastic life in England allowed a bold experiment in public worship: services were simplified, and the eight Hours were reduced to two - Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer. These, along with the Communion Service, became the backbone of public worship in the Church of England for the next four hundred years.
Baptists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians and later churches went for a much freer form of worship - hymns, readings, prayers, preaching. They did not use the set prayers and planned readings of the Church of England (the original Book of Common Prayer envisaged reading all the Psalms in the course of a month, and the whole Bible in the course of a year.). People often chose which church to go to on the basis of its style of worship. The two forms became polarized - uncharitable people dismissed the freer forms of service as "hymn sandwiches", and the more liturgical format as "vain repetition".
Fortunately in recent years, different denominations have seen the strengths in each other's form of worship. Our new Common Worship introduced a service which formalized what had been happening informally for a long time. This was the Service of the Word.
A Service of the Word is not a "hymn sandwich" - indeed, hymns are optional! Some things are compulsory - a greeting, prayers of penitence (on Sundays), the special prayer of the day (the Collect), other prayer, including the Lord's Prayer, readings, a Psalm or scriptural song, a "sermon" (on Sundays, when there should also be a Creed or Affirmation of Faith), and a liturgical ending.
Among these compulsory things, some have to follow an "authorized form" - but Common Worship, and its partner, New Patterns for Worship, provide a generous range of possibilities. Others can be freer. Readings may be dramatized, sung or read responsively. Sermons can be informal, and can use drama, interviews, discussion or audio-visuals.
Services of the Word cannot normally be "taken off the shelf" - preparing them requires fitting all the elements together around a specific theme. At St Ursula's, we have tried to involve Council, housegroups and other lay people in planning and preparing. These services can be trendy or traditional, modern or mediæval, interactive or contemplative. Their aim, like the aim of all worship, is to bring all who participate into the presence of God.
HD
If you are interested in helping with a Service of the Word, or sharing your views on such services, do please talk to Richard, Lynne, Wendy, Linda, Hector, Tricia or any other Council member. The church has copies of "Common Worship" and "New Patterns of Worship" which you can refer to, or you can find them on the internet at http://cofe.anglican.org/worship/liturgy/commonworship/texts